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Guantanamo interrogations 'faked’
From correspondents in New York
April 29, 2005
AUTHORITIES at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, says a former US Army translator at the camp.
Sergeant Erik Saar told CBS television’s 60 Minutes that he believed “only a few dozen” of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.
“Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation … a mock interrogation, basically,” Sgt Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.
“They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information,” he said, calling it “a fictitious world” created for the visitors.
Sgt Saar worked at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003.
US Southern Command spokesman Colonel David McWilliams said the military allows visiting politicians and others who need to understand the process to view interrogations but insisted, “we do not stage interrogations for VIP visits”.
Sgt Saar also recalled interrogation techniques he witnessed at Guantanamo, including one previously reported incident where a female officer behaved in an overtly sexual fashion while interrogating a devout Muslim, at one point smearing ink which she told the detainee was her menstrual blood on his face.
Colonel McWilliams declined to comment on that claim, saying it was similar to another incident detailed in leaked FBI memos that were the subject of a military investigation.
Sgt Saar writes about his time at the camp in the book Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, to be published next week by Penguin.
theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15122310%255E1702,00.html
From correspondents in New York
April 29, 2005
AUTHORITIES at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, says a former US Army translator at the camp.
Sergeant Erik Saar told CBS television’s 60 Minutes that he believed “only a few dozen” of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.
“Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation … a mock interrogation, basically,” Sgt Saar told the program, to air on Sunday.
“They would find a detainee that they knew to have been cooperative. They would ask the interrogator to go back over the same information,” he said, calling it “a fictitious world” created for the visitors.
Sgt Saar worked at Guantanamo from December 2002 to June 2003.
US Southern Command spokesman Colonel David McWilliams said the military allows visiting politicians and others who need to understand the process to view interrogations but insisted, “we do not stage interrogations for VIP visits”.
Sgt Saar also recalled interrogation techniques he witnessed at Guantanamo, including one previously reported incident where a female officer behaved in an overtly sexual fashion while interrogating a devout Muslim, at one point smearing ink which she told the detainee was her menstrual blood on his face.
Colonel McWilliams declined to comment on that claim, saying it was similar to another incident detailed in leaked FBI memos that were the subject of a military investigation.
Sgt Saar writes about his time at the camp in the book Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo, to be published next week by Penguin.
theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15122310%255E1702,00.html